Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Where did my taxes go?

wherethefuckdidmytaxesgo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 231 posts

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#151

Post by janalsncm »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #120
janalsncm wrote: post #72

Shouldn’t the “defense” line item be called “war” now since the department has been renamed? It’s more accurate anyways.

The DoD was named such by the act of Congress that established it. The President does not have the authority to rename it, no matter how much he pouts about it.

Touché on the actual renaming, but I kind of prefer “war” anyways. It’s a refreshing removal of euphemisms, of which I believe we have way too many.

If you are on a plane and they announce they are collecting “service items” people might be confused and hand over their “service weapon” if they forget that one means trash and the other means gun. Good thing we have the TSA to prevent this kind of misunderstanding.

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#152

Post by jltsiren »

ihumanable wrote: post #89
ch4s3 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The private insurance expenditure is part of that per capita number. US healthcare isn't "A system", its a number of interrelated systems that have lots of expensive hand-offs. We also spend a ton on lifestyles diseases because no one walks and culturally we eat like shit on average.

The graph shows both public and private expenditure. If you only consider the public per-capita expenditure it's more than every other nation on the graphs public + private per-capita spending.

The data behind the graph is probably from OECD, which does not use a public/private classification. Mostly because in many OECD countries, "public" healthcare is largely funded by private insurance.

According to OECD data, US healthcare spending in 2023 was 28% from government schemes, 55% from health insurance, 11% out-of-pocket, and 5% from other sources. For most countries, the health insurance category is further split into compulsory and voluntary categories, but that distinction does not really exist in the US.

All US health insurance spending is reported in the compulsory health insurance category. Probably because the bulk of the spending is from employment-based insurance, which is effectively mandatory. (You usually can't opt out and take cash instead.) Naive aggregators then combine government spending and compulsory insurance and report that as public spending.

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#153

Post by slg »

bko wrote: post #141
slg wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is not realistic to believe that we can become a nice wholesome European country if we just raise taxes a bit. This feels like a strawman. I can't recall ever hearing someone advocate for raising taxes and not changing a single other thing about the government. These ideas are all interconnected and someone advocating for increased taxes very likely has ideas about how spending should change too.

That's like increasing your going out budget at the same time as moderating your excessive drinking. The more money that's up for grabs, the higher the incentives for fraud and general abuse. I think the people that believe in a more efficient welfare state should look to reallocate the money. No one would complain. Instead it's always the promise that just [X] more billion from [billionaire] and we could solve homel…

>I think the people that believe in a more efficient welfare state should look to reallocate the money. No one would complain.

Are you simply calling the entire government a "welfare state" or do you believe that something like military spending is off the table for making more efficient? Because people very obviously would complain about shifting military spending to social programs and military spending is almost certainly the biggest differentiator in spending between us and those "'social democracies' such as Finland, France and Canada" that OP was talking about.

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#154

Post by degrees57 »

jerlam wrote: post #100
lastofthemojito wrote: post #14

As a thought experiment, it'd be interesting to imagine how things would play out if each taxpayer could adjust little sliders on each category to allocate where they personally would like their taxes to go. Agencies could recommend funding levels, Congress could recommend an allocation and if a taxpayer didn't change it, that default would take effect. But if a taxpayer preferred, they could say, "no, I won't be fun…

Organizations don't work well when their budget can change dramatically from one year to the next. There's no ability to take on long-term plans when another, popular department takes 50% of your budget, or someone in your PR department makes a gaffe. Long-term employees get laid off and won't return in a few years when your budget goes back up.

Off on a bit of a tangent, I 100% agree with you, and that was probably the best feature of California's Prop 13 from 1978. After it passed, the projected income to Sacramento was rock-solid for decades. California doesn't have an income problem; it has a spending problem.

Still, I would welcome the opportunity to let Sacramento know that, in my opinion, they spend too much on education and welfare and not enough on infrastructure.

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#155

Post by tomwheeler »

jl6 wrote: post #131
d_burfoot wrote: post #104

Many Americans do not realize how much money the US government spends. When you include all three levels, it comes to $32K/person/year [0]. This is much higher than countries that are considered "social democracies" such as Finland, France and Canada. If you look at wealthy blue cities like NYC or SF, the spending is on the order of $50K/p/y, comparable to Norway. It is not realistic to believe that we can become a n…

I think many Americans do not realize how much is spent on debt interest payments, which are a tidy source of income for rich people.

> I think many Americans do not realize how much is spent on debt interest payments, which are a tidy source of income for rich people.

Not to mention insurance companies and pension funds, plus local, state, and foreign governments

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#156

Post by ch4s3 »

phillipcarter wrote: post #62
ch4s3 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The private insurance expenditure is part of that per capita number. US healthcare isn't "A system", its a number of interrelated systems that have lots of expensive hand-offs. We also spend a ton on lifestyles diseases because no one walks and culturally we eat like shit on average.

> We also spend a ton on lifestyles diseases because no one walks and culturally we eat like shit on average. And there's a pretty straight line between that and government subsidies for sugar and processed foods in general, not to mention car-based infrastructure, although the latter doesn't stop other countries from not having crippling obesity rates.

> And there's a pretty straight line between that and government subsidies for sugar and processed foods in general

No there isn't. Sugar subsidy accounts for 1.7 cents per 12-ounce can of soda. Soda in the US is generally inelastic, and research has shown that a 10% increase in price results in lessss than a 5% decrease in consumption. Americans just like sugar and sitting, culturally.

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#157

Post by ch4s3 »

airstrike wrote: post #59
ch4s3 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot just gets sucked up by 3rd parties of all stripes. Only ~20% of hospitals are for profit institutions for example.

Non-profit doesn't mean money-hating, though

No but it directly contradicts OP's claim of "profit-seeking interests".

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#158

Post by ch4s3 »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #139
ch4s3 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot just gets sucked up by 3rd parties of all stripes. Only ~20% of hospitals are for profit institutions for example.

>Only ~20% of hospitals are for profit institutions for example. And the other 80% are little to no more efficient in terms of dollars input vs services rendered.

I am merely commenting that profit seeking is not a sufficient explanation.

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#159

Post by doctorpangloss »

9x39 wrote: post #117
doctorpangloss wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, we spend a lot on things people want, right? We are living in your sliders world. I hate these sorts of websites because they have a very intellectual starch to them but are very superficial. I also hate this frame of mind that's like, "nobody would choose to do boring stuff." People aren't stupid. I hate this "voters are stupid" frame of mind. It's unelectable, and it's always said by people who complain about…

>Look, we spend a lot on things people want, right? I'd say we spend a lot on things a few people who can maintain/expand power see ROI for power on. Sometimes that's things, sometimes that's just cash for voters and future voters. The sliders world is more about consent via revenues of the governed, rather than the tax crop they really are.

we can go into an actual, interesting conversation about government spending. personally, i think your pessimistic, slightly nihilist, "people who can maintain/expand power" POV is just a different side of the same "voters are stupid" coin, in that it is also unelectable (no Mag7 CEO or top-500 billionaire could win an election today, people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk even pay huge commissions to study it for them, and anyway, most of the top-500s are heirs, and the ones who are only slightly less wealthy but way, way less powerful lose elections all the time) but appeals to this cynical, conspiracy-minded BS that distracts from hard truths like:

people like paying for medical innovations. people are consenting to that. i mean, they certainly feel it is unfair when they have something they must pay for in order to survive, but in general, people have been choosing "expensive medical innovations" as an alternative to "dying" since the advent of the venture pharmaceutical system.

slider world CANNOT fix the problem that for some people, medical innovations are expensive. people will pay ANY price to cure a terminal illness suffered by their child, for example - there is no MARKET PRICE or AUCTION PRICE or VALID PRICE, i mean you can put a number into the slider, but you can see how "average of current + creditable worth" would be the answer to "what would you pay to cure your kid's terminal illness?"

and this is so, so much more interesting to talk about than taxes or vague nihilism about power. but no. it's too unorthodox. are you getting it? the website is stupid, why is it so hard to say that?

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#160

Post by ch4s3 »

tgrowazay wrote: post #102
ch4s3 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot just gets sucked up by 3rd parties of all stripes. Only ~20% of hospitals are for profit institutions for example.

My daughter’s classmate’s father is a head of a non-profit hospital. They have a 6k sqft house with a basketball court, pool and a pool house in the prime location in West Los Angeles. They had to join two lots to build to their liking.

Would you expect that job to not pay well in a market where similar skills are directly transferable to running any mid sized corporation?
Post reply on HN